Research seminar "Where is the Second Deep Transition most likely to emerge?" (Laur Kanger, Anna-Kati Pahker)

Research Seminar

1st March 2023

Narva Rd 18 - 1024 and Zoom

at 11.00-12.00

LAUR KANGER (University of Sussex, University of Tartu), ANNA-KATI PAHKER (University of Tartu)

Where is the Second Deep Transition most likely to emerge?

The 250-year co-evolution of multiple socio-technical systems underpinning industrial societies has enabled an unprecedented growth in societal welfare, while accelerating climate change, resource depletion, and loss of biodiversity. The recent Deep Transitions framework argues that this process, called the First Deep Transition, has generated a regionally uneven landscape of industrial modernity—a set of pervasive ideas, institutions, and practices of industrial societies related to the natural environment, science, and technology. We propose a novel composite Industrial Modernity Index for identifying countries where the legacy of industrial modernity is currently the least present, and which are therefore structurally most favourable to enacting the Second Deep Transition. In contrast to established sustainability and welfare metrics, our results identify a range of countries across the Global North/South divide. These countries may thus form the core experimentation and learning space for the possibly emerging Second Deep Transition.